written By Brandon Chu

I was a pretty good player - quick first step, could finish at the rim, lefty advantage, great cardio, and a decent mid range shot. I also developed enough confidence that I would rarely see a game being played where I felt I couldn’t at least be a decent role player. My friend Darnel and I would go challenge people on random public courts and we won our fair share.

To me, how a person plays basketball reveals everything you need to know about them: how they work with and treat others, their leadership qualities, their confidence, and how they handle pressure. 

I saw a lot of personas over the years: the ball hog, the trash talker, the lazy af defender. I encountered, however, one persona much more than others: the doubter; not in themselves, but in my abilities. 

The same story would play out hundreds of times: I’d walk on the court as an unknown - a skinny, 5”9 asian kid - and I immediately got zero respect. To the opposing team, I wasn’t a threat. To my newly adopted team, I wasn’t someone to pass the ball to. In western culture, Asian men are not considered physical threats - whether in violence or in sports. “There’s no way this little asian kid is good at ball” is what I imagine was in their mind. 

Of course, when I started racking up points, playing tough defense, and out-running everyone on the court - their perceptions changed, and I got my props. To be clear, there was almost never any sort of hateful racism, rather just an underlying belief that I, as an Asian man, could not compete. That may sound harmless, but those perceptions constantly limited the opportunities I got on the court. I literally would get the ball less than others, until I could prove my skill - and it’s pretty hard to prove your skill without the ball… you get the idea. Thus is the nature of how many racial stereotypes create systemic issues.

I say all this as a 36 year old in retrospect. Back then, I used to day dream about winning NBA championships, shooting game-winning final shots, and basically being “the man”. But also in retrospect, I never really believed it.

Enter Jeremy Lin, aka Linsanity

For those that don’t follow basketball, in 2012, Jeremy Lin came out of obscurity as an undrafted NBA D-league (D = development) player, who was literally days away from being let go, to going on an unprecedented streak of individual performances, propelling the New York Knicks (a terrible, terrible team at the time) to a seven game winning streak and beating the best players in the world along the way. He went from zero to hero, real fast. I won’t recount the story as it has been shared countless times, but if you don’t know it, read this from The Ringer.

For two weeks, the world watched and cheered as one of the greatest underdog stories in sports history unraveled. This story captivated the world for two reasons: first, it was simply an out of mind performance by Lin that everyone had to respect, and secondly... he was Asian and it broke people’s brains. The second reason people couldn’t really talk about, but everyone knew that was why.

Jeremy of course wasn’t the first Chinese player of fame - Yao Ming was and probably still is the most famous Chinese player ever, but Jeremy was different in the most important way to so many of the tens of millions of Asian and Chinese diaspora in the west: he was born in America. In Jeremy, I saw myself (except for the Harvard part. And the tall part. And the annoyingly good person part) as did tens of millions of Asian Americans and Canadians. 

As any racialized person knows, seeing yourself represented where you “don’t belong” is not just powerful because they look like you. It’s because you inherently understand the struggle it must have taken them to get there. When I first saw Linsanity happening, without even needing to validate it, I knew that he had been underestimated as a player his whole career. I knew he had been subject to racism his entire career. I knew, even as Linsanity happened, that people would discount his accomplishments. Of course, as the years went on, the world learned that this all happened.

And that’s why Linsanity meant so much to me, because I knew it took no less than superhuman determination and tolerating disrespect every step of the way, for Jeremy to make his dreams come true. He was an example to me that my far fetched dreams were worth having, and I well-up thinking about it even a decade later. 

38 at the Garden - the most important game during Linsanity

I’ve been fortunate in my life to become an active angel investor in technology startups, but when all the hate crimes happened during COVID, I couldn’t help but feel uninspired by investing. That is, until I met Dave Lu who founded Hyphen Capital, a venture fund focused exclusively on backing Asian American founders to break the bamboo ceiling. He also spearheaded the initiative Stand with Asian Americans, which brought together Asian business leaders and raised $10M toward social justice, of which I was happy to contribute to. 

Through Hyphen Capital and with the upcoming 10th anniversary of Linsanity, the opportunity arose to fund a new documentary about Jeremy’s story at a time when our community needs it most. 

38 at the Garden is about the most important game of Linsanity, when the Knicks went up against the God-like Lakers, and before the game Kobe Bryant publicly dismissed Jeremy and the threat he posed. It’s called “38” at the Garden, because Jeremy proceeded to drop 38 points on the Lakers, with Kobe defending him throughout. It’s directed by Frank Chi, who made the acclaimed Netflix documentary RGB, and produced by the Oscar award-winning producers of Two Distant Strangers, Travon Free and Samir Hernandez.

Like my childhood experiences, it is a perfect example of being given zero (or negative) respect because of how you look. But Jeremy got his props that night, in front of the world.

The film will debut at the Tribeca film festival on June 12, with a second showing on June 16th. As with most independent film debuts, where the film goes from there is all dependent on how well it’s received, and by demand from audiences around the world. While I can’t say yet where it will show next (at other film festivals, on streaming services like Netflix, or in major theaters), you can help to increase the chances of it succeeding by writing in to your favorite film festival (eg. TIFF) and/or streaming service.

So much has changed for the Asian American/Canadian community since Linsanity, and yet so much has stayed the same.

What has stayed the same, unfortunately, is that we’re still targets of disrespect and hate. The violent anti-Asian hate around the world has shaken our communities, and our sense of safety and belonging in the West. On the flip side, it has awakened us to acknowledge the injustices we’ve experienced our whole lives, and it’s galvanizing us to fight back.

What has changed is that we are more represented than we ever have been, particularly in the arts. The arts is so crucial because cultural influence is the ultimate combat to hate: when films humanize and celebrate us, it counters xenophobic perceptions of us as invisible, perpetual foreigners. This progress has not been accidental, but because of the great effort of organizations like Gold House, who were behind Crazy Rich Asians and the spreading of Asian American stories over the last 5 years.

Whether you’re a basketball fan or not, whether you’re Asian or not, Jeremy’s story is a universal one about the underdog who rose to the occasion, overcame adversity, and broke the mold. That story cannot die.

watch Teaser video of 38 At the Garden

Brandon is a VP Product at Shopify and startup investor. Soul is equal parts 烧鹅, 찌개, and jerk chicken. Toronto is home.

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